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Reuters Will No Longer Let Reporter Who Worked for Saleh Cover Yemen

3:41 p.m. | Updated The Reuters news agency on Thursday defended the work of one of its Yemen correspondents amid outrage from opposition activists over his employment by the government as a personal translator to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

But Reuters said that the reporter, Mohamed Sudam, would no longer be working for the agency from Yemen, though he would probably still provide reports from elsewhere in the Middle East.

“Sudam’s work as a Reuters stringer over the course of many years has been fair and accurate,” the news agency said in a statement. (The term “stringer” refers to a correspondent attached to a news organization, but not a full employee.) “When he became a translator for the president, he disclosed his role to Reuters.”

“On reviewing the matter, however, we believe it’s not appropriate to use a stringer who is also working for the government,” the statement read.
Mr. Sudam, who was briefly detained last month by opposition forces because of his connection to the government, is thought to be currently living with his family outside Yemen. It was unclear if he was still working for the Yemeni government. Calls to Mr. Sudam’s cellphone on Thursday went unanswered.

Mr. Sudam served as a translator to the president even as he filed regular bylined reports for the news agency on the increasingly violent uprising against Mr. Saleh’s three decades of authoritarian rule this year.

Mr. Sudam’s employment by the president, which began several years ago, was well known but largely ignored by many inside Yemen’s small world of journalists, where many reporters take loosely concealed positions either for or against the government.

That appears to have changed last month after Mr. Sudam was arrested at a checkpoint by forces loyal to the opposition military commander, Gen. Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar. Local news reports made passing reference to his job as both journalist and government translator.

The Yemen Journalist Syndicate, an advocacy group, reacted by calling for his immediate release. Neither in that report, nor in a subsequent news release, did the group acknowledge Mr. Sudam’s role as presidential translator:

As the syndicate rejects involving journalists in conflicts between the concerned parties, it also discards Sudam’s release to be subjected to any bargain.

The syndicate called on the First Armor Division and its commander, Ali Muhsen al-Ahma,r to apologize officially and publicly to journalist Sudam and the Journalists’ Syndicate.

Reporters who met defected general Ali Mohsen on Monday quoted him as saying he didn’t know that Sudam was a journalist, that he knew only that he was President Saleh’s private interpreter.

Mr. Sudam was released less than a week later in exchange for a handful of opposition prisoners held by the government, the paper reported.

As word of his dual roles spread online after his arrest, many expressed outrage at Reuters and accused the international news organization of bias in favor of the president, who still faces sustained street protests and armed opposition by military defectors.

“It’s a clear indication of conflict of interest, a systematic problem found in various sectors and institutions in Yemen,” said one youth activist, Atiaf Alwazir.

Kelly McBride, an expert on journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, said that while Mr. Sudam’s work for the government “would certainly be a red flag,” it might be “one that a news organization is willing to put up with, if the translator had a minimal role with the president.”

But some Yemeni journalists and international advocates defended Mr. Sudam. “Many journalists in Yemen have government jobs,” said Ali al-Dabaybi, a Yemeni freelance journalist.

Hafez al-Bukari, a former head of the Yemen journalist syndicate, observed that in an authoritarian state like Yemen, there is often the expectation of bias in reporting. “The independent media does not exist,” he said.

But he added that he thought Mr. Sudam “keeps his distance” from the government in his reporting. “Many people, they think he is close to the president, but actually he is just a staff member and they need him as a translator. He’s not one of their stooges.

He added, “They don’t trust him.”

Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the Middle East coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, also said there might be less of a conflict than some have suggested.

“On the face of it, it seems to me that Reuters is making the right call,” he said in a telephone interview. “He’s not an analyst; he’s a translator. It becomes politically inflammatory, but there isn’t an inherent conflict of interest.”

Mr. Abdel Dayem said Mr. Sudam’s reporting was not the reason for his detention by opposition forces. Moreover, Mr. Abdel Dayem said, taking on a second job “is a personal choice that everyone makes, and it has nothing to do with one’s work as a journalist.”

Laura Kasinof reported from Sana, Yemen, and J. David Goodman from New York.

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